


my heart's staying put

by grim_lupine



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Caretaking, F/M, Female Dean Winchester, First Time, Pre-Series, Season/Series 01, caretaking kink, gratuitous use of 'little brother' during sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 22:07:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15543174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/pseuds/grim_lupine
Summary: It's like Deanna’s been asleep for four years, traversing the highways of her life on autopilot, every joy and every pain muted and numbed. In the months since she got Sam back she's been coming to life slowly, with the pins-and-needles tingling of a deadened limb awakening. One day the music in the Impala seems to ring brighter, so Deanna turns up the volume and caterwauls along while Sam tries to stop laughing next to her. One day she remembers the vivid, manic thrill of hunting, this trial-by-fire life she's chosen, and the next time they put a spirit to rest she's grinning so recklessly that Sam tells her she looks deranged, but he sounds fond, at least. One day Deanna rolls over in her bed, sleepily expecting to see Sam across the room, and shedoes, and the relief of it is so strong it makes her roll back over to look up at the ceiling, weak-limbed and gasping.And now this: Sam leaning on Deanna’s strength like she’s solid ground beneath his feet, like he's given his trust over to her again wholeheartedly. It's the final cut to the protective numb shell around her, leaving her newborn and centered.





	my heart's staying put

**Author's Note:**

> a little overwrought and codependent, just the way i like my winchesters [thumbs up]
> 
> title from kindling by elbow

Sammy’s a good baby — the kind that gurgles happily at strangers and whimpers faintly when he needs something, only devolves into full-on, red-faced wailing when he's really miserable. Sammy greets Deanna every time she enters his line of sight with a gleeful shriek that makes her say, without fail, “Sammy!” in loving, high-pitched imitation. He’s good for Daddy too, pats at his whiskered cheeks with flailing hands and blows bubbles at him until Daddy grins his tired, helpless grin and plants a scratchy kiss on his tender cheek. 

It's only when Daddy's especially sad — the kind of sadness that hangs around him in the air — that Sammy protests, fat tears brimming up in his eyes as he chews on Daddy's shirt, and it's like he's sad _with_ Daddy, not because of him. 

Today's a sad kind of day: Daddy’s still sleeping when Sammy starts to show signs of hunger, so Deanna decides not to wake him — she's a big girl, and she's figured out the bottles by now. 

Sammy takes the bottle greedily, sucking it down and squirming in Deanna’s arms. When he's all done and settled, Deanna sits on the floor with him and keeps him cuddled in her lap like a sleepy little kitten. “Bah!” Sammy says, slapping clumsily at her belly and loosely clutching her shirt in his fist, and then he just gums a dimply smile up at her, and suddenly Deanna realizes that for that one moment she is Sammy’s whole world, the only person that exists, the only thing he sees in his blinking, sleepy eyes. 

No one's ever _needed_ her before. 

“Wow,” Deanna whispers, and clutches Sammy tight, kisses the words into the top of his head: “I got you, Sammy. I got you.” 

 

Sammy at six is just criminally unfair. The earnest, fawnlike brown eyes are bad enough; when you add to that the dimples, the curly mop of hair, and the hiccuping giggle, there isn't a thing in the world anyone could deny him. 

Strangers certainly have no hope — faced with the totality of his pint-sized sweetness they're helpless to do anything but give him the extra cookie, or the ruffle of his hair, or the hour of their time reading him stories at the library. Dad and Deanna are curtailed only by their desire to make sure Sammy grows up to be a decent human being, but for her own part, Deanna knows she's always only one trembling lip away from giving right in to any and all demands. 

In truth, probably the only thing saving Sammy from being spoiled is the innate core of sweetness in him, a streak of empathy and kindness beyond his years. He'll cheerfully wheedle the last of their cereal from Deanna, and then turn around and pretend like he's suddenly lost his appetite for his favorite sour candy so he can give her the sticky last two saved in his drawer when she's stuck in bed with a cold, like she can't see through him easy as breathing. 

If Deanna’s wrapped around Sammy's little finger, then she's got him wound tight in her heartstrings in return: it's Deanna who gets his painstakingly colored valentines, his construction paper Christmas ornaments, his just-because gifts like the worn-smooth rock he picked up at school because it was ‘pretty like her eyes’. When Mother's Day comes around Sammy steps carefully around Dad with unerring, too-old perception and empathy, but when it's just the two of them he gives Deanna a card and burrows into her arms, tells her earnestly, “You do all the stuff they said mommies do, Dee.” 

So what Sammy wants, Sammy gets. He’ll ask her to tell him stories all night, to help him with his math homework, to give him her faded Batman shirt so he can wear it to school and inevitably drip glitter and applesauce all over it; he asks with the absolute, soul-deep certainty that Deanna will say yes, that her time and her patience and her things are his to have, and Deanna would walk in front of _traffic_ for this kid, so what, is it supposed to be hard to give him this? To make him happy, have him look at her like she's the superhero, never mind that he's got the shirt on? 

Sammy says with toothbrush clutched in his hand and pleading little frown tucked into his pouting mouth, “Come say goodnight, Dee? And check under the bed?” and Deanna says, “Okay, Sammy.”

“And tell me a story?” Sammy says hopefully.

And Deanna says, “Okay, Sammy,” and it’s easy. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

 

“Deeeeeee,” Sam groans pathetically from the bed, face-down. Deanna snorts at the sight of him. 

“Kiddo, you’re pathetic,” Deanna says fondly. 

“Everything hurts,” Sam whines with endless, fourteen-year-old drama — the kind he swallows down around Dad because John Winchester Does Not Have Time for That, the kind he only lets out around Deanna. She likes that, actually — that he's comfortable complaining his little head off around her, like he trusts her to still like him when he's done. It makes her feel like she can tell him stuff that's bothering her too, stuff she wouldn't tell Dad for fear of looking whiny or young. “I’m so _tired_.” 

“Well, if you’d just quit growing,” Deanna says pointedly, but she’s already sitting down by his legs, closing her hands down around his calves to squeeze and release. 

“I wish I could,” Sam says glumly, a little muffled by his pillow, as Deanna starts massaging out the aches in his legs. 

“No, you don’t,” Deanna says.

Sam turns his head a little to shoot her a tiny, sly grin over his shoulder. “No, I don’t,” he agrees.

Sam’s been shooting up like crazy the last year or so, stumbling over new coltish limbs, eating what seems like half his body weight every night, sleeping for hours and complaining about the process all the while. Apparently the recent discovery that, when they stand close enough to hug, he can now tuck Deanna’s head under his chin makes it all worthwhile.

“Brat,” Deanna says, and pinches the inside of his knee just to hear him yelp.

They're quiet while she keeps massaging his legs, a slow easy silence neither of them feels the need to break. If Deanna’s being honest with herself, it's kind of nice that she can do this for Sam. The days when she could help him with his homework are long gone, and he's so independent he wants to do as much for himself as possible. But here he still needs her — still her Sammy, still her baby brother, even as she feels an uneasy tremor every time she looks at him in the right light and just _knows_ that this isn't the kind of life he should be living, and sees that he’s starting to know it too. 

“Dee?” Sam says, sleepy-voiced and eyes half-lidded. “Can I have a sandwich when I wake up?” And then like that he's out, like flicking a switch. 

Deanna’s laughing quietly as she leaves the room, presses her hand to her mouth to stifle it, feels the tears start to prickle in her eyes. 

 

Deanna’s seen this coming. That's all she can think as her baby brother walks out the door with a duffel bag slung across his shoulders, with trembling lips, with the echo of his hurt fury still ringing through the air; as Dad stares past her at the door slammed shut with regret and anger warring equally in his eyes. She's seen this coming in the way Sam has stopped asking her for things, because the things he wants are no longer the things she can get for him, and if it hurts her keenly, the only consolation is that she knows it hurts him too. 

She's seen this coming for years now — so how the fuck is it possible that it hurts so badly? 

“Deanna,” Dad says, and it could be a warning or a plea, but it doesn't matter. There's only one way she can go. 

Deanna shoves her keys in her pocket and leaves. 

Sam hasn't gone far, maybe fifty feet from the front door, turned toward it in hopeful searching, and the look on his face when he sees her — a bright burst of relief washing over the set-jawed anger, the guilt, the wavering bruised misery that makes him look ten years old, for all his height — breaks her heart clean in two. Deanna has to stop and shove the heel of her hand into her chest, trying to push back the soft insides of her spilling out onto the ground at her feet, before she can take another step forward. 

And if that isn't enough, if that just isn't enough to make her want to lie down and die, well: when Deanna gets closer to Sam, he tries for a tremulous smile and asks, “Will you drive me to the bus station?” and for the first time in his goddamn life he sounds unsure asking her for something, scared, like he doesn't know what her answer might be, like he doesn't know there's only one answer she could ever give him. 

Deanna digs the keys out of her pocket. “Come on, Sammy,” she says quietly, and fists a hand in the back of his jacket to drag him to the car. 

The drive is silent and awkward and horrible, until Sam leans to the left a scant couple inches and Deanna takes the hint, squeezing her hand around the back of Sam’s neck and leaving it there as she keeps driving one-handed. They get to the bus station and Deanna parks, the rumble of the car dying away and leaving a fragile vacancy in its place. Deanna fills it first:

“Give me your address when you get there,” she says. “I'll send you some money in a week or so.”

“Dee,” Sam starts to protest, mouth twisting mulishly. 

“Don't you argue with me,” Deanna says sharply, and continues in as much reproach as she can stand to give him when he looks so sad, “If you'd given me some warning I’d have had it ready for you, but I just need a little time to get some together.”

Even seated, Sam looms long-limbed at her side; but he's looking at Deanna with all the wide-eyed faith of his childhood, and the way she feels about him is so immense, she thinks she could wrap him up in it and squeeze him back down into the little boy who fit in her lap once upon a time. 

“Hey,” Deanna says gently, smiling at him with all the shell of normality she can pull up around herself. “You know I've gotta look out for my little brother.”

Sam lets out a sound like she’s put a knife in him. He wraps himself around her, twisting so he can lean across the seat and gather her up, and Deanna’s pretty sure he's got her hair in his mouth, and she just banged her elbow on the dash, and it's painful and uncomfortable and it's the best thing in the world. Sam kisses the top of her head, her temple, her cheek, catching the corner of her mouth as she turns the wrong way, and Deanna closes her eyes, feverish and faint. 

“Dee…” Sam says, and Deanna can hear it in his voice, feel it in the curling clutch of his fingers, see it forming on his lips when she pulls just far enough away to look at him: the words _come with me_ linger in the air between them, crystallizing sharper and sharper, until Sam shakes his head to dispel them. Illuminated hazily in the dusty yellow light spilling into the car, Sam's mouth curls ruefully, and he says instead, “You'll call me?”, saving her once again from a question he knows she'll have to answer with a _no_ , and wound them both. 

“You're damn right I will,” Deanna says, straightening his jacket for him and thumping his chest when she's done, signalling the end to their mutual breakdown. “I expect a full report card, Sammy.” 

“You're not talking about my classes, are you,” Sam says dryly. 

“Not unless you're signed up for Booze and Babes 101,” Deanna says, winking. 

“De _an_ na,” Sam says, and he's trying to sound unimpressed but he's laughing instead, the helpless burbling laughter of tension giving way to relief, and this is Deanna’s gift to herself: she gets to send her little brother off laughing and soft-eyed, and when the bus pulls away, taking the best of her with it, she can keep that image like a talisman in her heart. 

 

The boy Deanna gets back after Stanford is a boy no longer — broad-shouldered now to match his height, eyes ancient with grief — but the curse of it is that he is still so wholly Deanna’s little brother, goes quiet under her hands after a nightmare, pretends to grumble when she calls him Sammy but responds to it like a puppy being petted. 

He's her little brother, and the thing hurting him most is the thing she can't fix for him, which has always been what hurts her most in turn. 

Slowly they move through it, coming out the other side to where Sam is laughing again, where Deanna can needle him and play pranks on him, where she doesn't have to stay up waiting to hear if Sam is crying for Jess in his sleep again. They come back together again so slowly that Deanna doesn't register each pinprick of unease every time something feels wrong, until it's happened so many times it's built up into something unignorable. 

Sam doesn't ask her for things anymore — not even the small things Deanna's used to, like half her fries or dibs on the first shower. Testing, Deanna brings Sam a plain black coffee the next time she goes to get one for herself, to see if he'll complain and ask for a latte the time after that. He doesn't, so Deanna brings him one anyway the next time, and gets a quiet little _thank you_ in response. 

And that might be worse — the _please_ s and _thank you_ s. It's _thank you_ when Deanna gets him a beer, _thank you_ when she stitches him up; she asks Sam, “Wanna get dinner somewhere you can get a decent salad tonight?” and Sam says “ _Please_ ,” and then a grateful little, “Hey — thanks,” when they get there, and it makes Deanna want to tear her _hair_ out. 

It's not that Sam hasn't always been polite. Deanna raised him right, and his manners somehow ended up nicer than hers. But ‘polite’ has always been for other people, for strangers. They don't give each other the please’s or thank you’s, because they just _do_ for each other, with the unquestioning, unthinking reciprocity that comes with absolute faith. To see it shifting now is more than Deanna can bear. 

They finish up a hunt in Ohio and hang around for another day in the motel room, both of them needing the rest. Sam especially is a beer and a strong gust of wind away from being knocked out, running on about seven hours of sleep between the previous two nights. Deanna watches him carefully and secretively from under her lashes — lack of sleep plus too much squinting research on an overbright screen equals — 

On cue, Sam winces again, unable to hide this one like he's been trying with the others for the past ten minutes. With one hand he takes another sip of his beer; with the other, he tries to surreptitiously massage his temples as he leans on it against the wall above the bed. His head must be pounding for him to hide it this badly. Deanna watches him throw a quick yearning look at the bathroom where the medicine kit is, and then her idiot baby brother actually tries to _roll to his feet_ , oh, for fuck's sake — 

“For fuck's sake, Sam,” Deanna snaps, never one for censoring herself. She motions at Sam to lay still, and comes back two minutes later with a bottle of pills, a glass of water and a damp chilly towel slung over her forearm. Sam submits meekly to the pills she shoves down his throat, and drains the water while she turns off all the lights in the room except one small comforting lamp in the far corner. His eyes flutter shut as Deanna puts the cold towel on his forehead from temple to temple, and then shoot back open when she says, “Move over, Sasquatch.” 

“What?” Sam starts to protest, and then keeps squawking distantly as Deanna ignores him and shoves him over until she can sit up next to him on the bed. His protests continue right up until she wrestles him down to put his head on her thigh, scratching at his scalp and thumbing the tension out of his neck, at which point Sam cuts off mid-word and goes boneless like she’s found his off switch. 

“Y’don’haveto,” Sam mumbles in one slurring word, but he's already starting to drift as Deanna says, “Shut up, Sammy,” and keeps petting him as he curls into her in an exhausted sprawl. 

It's only 5pm. Deanna's going to have to wake him up in a couple hours to get some food in him, but for now she just clicks on the tv and kills time watching at a low, monotonous volume. Sam’s head is a warm weight on her thigh, his hand curled up on her knee; the towel on his head is dripping cold splotches on Deanna’s jeans, but the slow, even puffs of his breath and the easy trust of his slack mouth warm her to the core. 

Twice in his sleep Sam murmurs something distantly, eyes fluttering. Deanna soothes him back down both times, and the way he turns into her palm in blind instinctive recognition, nuzzling in, makes her heart trip and stutter over its next beat.

It's like Deanna’s been asleep for four years, traversing the highways of her life on autopilot, every joy and every pain muted and numbed. In the months since she got Sam back she's been coming to life slowly, with the pins-and-needles tingling of a deadened limb awakening. One day the music in the Impala seems to ring brighter, so Deanna turns up the volume and caterwauls along while Sam tries to stop laughing next to her. One day she remembers the vivid, manic thrill of hunting, this trial-by-fire life she's chosen, and the next time they put a spirit to rest she's grinning so recklessly that Sam tells her she looks deranged, but he sounds fond, at least. One day Deanna rolls over in her bed, sleepily expecting to see Sam across the room, and she _does_ , and the relief of it is so strong it makes her roll back over to look up at the ceiling, weak-limbed and gasping. 

And now this: Sam leaning on Deanna’s strength like she’s solid ground beneath his feet, like he's given his trust over to her again wholeheartedly. It's the final cut to the protective numb shell around her, leaving her newborn and centered. 

Sam wakes up on his own a little before the two-hour mark, blinking slowly and swallowing away the stale sleep taste. Deanna’s already dumped the towel on the floor, so she can see that the tight lines of tension around his eyes from before have faded away. Sam smushes his face into her completely dead leg for a minute, grumpy at being awake, then seems to remember himself all at once.

“Oh,” Sam says, rolling onto his back and blinking at her, a sheepish, uncertain look stealing over his face, and Deanna can see the words about to trip off his tongue as he opens his mouth again, and she reaches over and covers his mouth to still his infuriating gratefulness. 

“Why don't you ask for my help anymore?” Dean says, striking while the sleepy vulnerability still hovers around Sam. “I mean, you don't ask me for _anything_ , actually.”

“What?” Sam says, muffled under her hand; but his eyes dart shiftily, and Deanna gives him her best _don't fuck with me_ glare, and some childhood conditioning must still have its hooks in him because, when she lifts her hand, he sighs and continues, “Look, I don't — I remember what I was like, that’s all.” 

“What does that mean,” Deanna says flatly, and slides down the bed onto her side to face Sam, partly because her leg is screaming awake with the returning blood flow, partly because Sam is starting to look more self-deprecating and chagrined than mildly sheepish, and she wants to get closer and stop him from ever looking like that again. 

“Come on, I was always asking you for things, asking you to do things for me, like a spoiled — ” Sam breaks off, shaking his head. “And then I just _left_ you, so. I told myself when you came and got me that I wouldn't be selfish anymore.” 

Deanna just looks at him for a minute, taking that in, so relieved and so flush with love that she has to reach out and dig her knuckles punishingly into Sam's chest, ignoring his yelp as she tells him, “You're an idiot, Sam.” 

Sam goes to respond, but Deanna puts her hand over his mouth again. His wide searching eyes transfix her; her throat works as she tries to find the words for all the things she's never dared verbalize: how badly she needs Sam, needs him to need her, needs to be that for him. 

“Don't you know how much I like it?” Deanna says, voice wavering as terror starts to rise in her, determinedly crashing right through it. “That I can give you what you need — that you trust me to do that?” An oceanic roar is building in her ears, and she almost doesn't get it out, low and half-plaintive: “Don't you know you can have whatever you want from me?” 

Sam's hand closes around Deanna’s, pulling it gently away from his mouth. “What if I want too much?” he asks her, achingly serious, and Deanna doesn't know if it's his hand trembling or hers.

“ _Whatever_ you want,” Deanna repeats, holding Sam's hand so tight her nails dig in. She knows what's coming — has known on some level since Sam hit sixteen, tree-tall and sharp-featured and looking at her in that new, prickling way — and the happy anticipation washing through her is so vertiginous, she almost can't distinguish it from nausea for the stomach-flipping instant before Sam gauges the truth in her eyes and asks, voice cracking, “Can I kiss you?” 

“ _Yes_ ,” Deanna says, reaching toward him. Sam doesn't lunge at her like she thinks he might, sliding slowly toward her instead like he still thinks she might pull away; but with large gentle hands cradling her face he kisses her like he wants to crawl right inside her, and Deanna opens up for him with a stunned gratefulness that there is no imbalance to the scale of their need for each other, that they are equally caught and equally ruined. 

“Can I — can I — ” Sam mumbles against Deanna’s mouth, one of his hands sliding under the hem of her t-shirt and thumbing slow tingling circles on her belly, and Deanna pants, “Yeah, c'mon Sammy,” and lets him shove the shirt over her head, thanking god she'd made herself comfortable earlier and gone braless underneath. 

Sam's detail-obsessed brain and eternal love of research hide that at his core he is, like Deanna, someone who takes in the truth of a thing with body more than mind: he doesn't even stop to look Deanna over, just dives in to get his hands and his mouth on Deanna’s breasts like he's been waiting a lifetime for it, cupping them and kissing all around and over the curves of them, sucking the big soft buds of her nipples with pleased little groans as they pull tight and firm in his mouth. Deanna’s half-ready to tease him for being a tits man, until she has the thought that maybe he _has_ been waiting a lifetime, one of those things he's been wanting and obsessing over, thinking he couldn't have until now. It's a thought so devastatingly hot Deanna can't suppress a little moan, arching into Sam’s mouth. Sam lifts his head at the sound, eyes burning dark and still a little wide, like he still can't believe this is happening.

Deanna touches Sam's wet pink mouth, says, “What else d’you want, little brother?” Then she flushes a little at how thoughtlessly, how easily that came out; but Sam shudders full-bodied and goes a little wild, and by the time Deanna can gather her thoughts long enough to pull him away from her by the hair, her mouth is plumped up and stinging sweetly, and she's dizzy-drunk on the taste of him. “C'mon, Sammy,” she says, low and cajoling.

“ _Dee_ ,” Sam says shakily, and then makes her hand tighten reflexively in his hair when he continues, “Can I eat you out? I've wanted to for — you don't know _how_ long.” 

The sweet expectant look on Sam's face and the patient question in his body are not what Deanna had expected when she told him to ask for what he wanted, to be sure that she would give it to him. She had expected a return to form, to his bossy, needy little-brother demands, the ones she so loved. Instead she gets Sam's hands cupping her body with aching reverence, every question a plea, a supplication, like he will live or die by her answer. It's terrifyingly heady.

Deanna pulls Sam down to kiss him again, biting his lower lip and pulling back until it slips free, raked tender and pink. “Knock yourself out, baby,” she says in his ear, flushed fever-hot against her mouth. “ _After_ you get naked.”

Sam rolls right off Deanna to get to his feet, swaying a little with the headrush. Deanna slides out of her own jeans and panties without looking, eyes only for Sam undoing the buttons on his shirt with head bowed, revealing all the smooth tan skin she's aching to get under her hands. 

Deanna knows Sam's pretty good with girls, for all she’s teased him about it before. Even before he left for Stanford he knew how to use those wide earnest eyes, the shy tip of his smile, to greatest effect. She doesn't know how he was with Jess, but since he's been back with Deanna she's seen him flirting a few times for a case, and, well — he's got some game. So this, the shaky hands, the pink flush spreading over Sam's cheeks, the helpless need in his eyes laid totally bare before her — that's for _Deanna_ : object of Sam’s teenage fantasies, his desperate pained love, the one thing capable of ruining him. It makes Deanna feel godlike, makes her want to tie him down and tease him and be sweet to him, figure out which way he’ll break faster. 

“Tell me how you want it,” Sam says intently as he gets back on the bed, pushing Deanna’s legs open with his hands that look almost big enough to wrap right around her thighs. “I want it to be good for you.”

Deanna just looks at Sam: the taut, caged hunger in his body, pink tongue slipping out to wet his lips, a charged look in his eyes turning them some coin-bright color she’s never seen before. 

“Sammy,” Deanna says helplessly. “I swear to god, that’s not going to be any kind of problem.”

It’s not: Sam’s fingers on Deanna’s inner thighs and his mouth on her cunt are so visceral a reality it feels like she’s never before been touched there. She has to put her hand in Sam’s hair just to ground herself, all liquid, trembling and spilling open. 

There's a hot pulsing beat concentrated between her thighs, driven faster by the slick rub of Sam’s tongue, the way he sucks her clit in soft maddening pulls. Deanna’s thighs flex hard under Sam’s hands as she tries to keep from closing them around him; Sam lifts his head to look up at her, and his eyes are so hazy, so blissed-out Deanna realizes that Sam — impossibly — loves this even more than she does. That knowledge sends her careening down the path to orgasm, pulling Sam's hair when it hits her and saying his name in a voice so breathless and raw she barely recognizes it. Sam keeps lapping up her slick, nudging her tender clit with his nose, and it feels like Deanna’s never coming down from it, heart hammering in her chest and flying high.

“C’mon, Sammy, c’mon baby,” Deanna gasps out, hardly aware of what she’s saying, “get in there — ” and he does, shouldering her leg up and pulling her lower body closer so he can bury his face deeper, tonguing into the twitching, sensitive clutch of her cunt like he’s drinking from her, pulling the most nasty-hot, wet sounds from her body that make her blush down to her chest like she didn't know she was capable of anymore. Deanna actually screams when she comes this time, a short shocked cry that rings in her ears, and she throws an arm over her face to cover the fact that jesus-fucking-christ there are tears in her eyes from how thoroughly she's been wrecked, how she'll never be able to recover from the way Sam's taken her apart. 

Eventually Deanna lifts her arm and peers through wet lashes down at Sam. He's licking the taste of her off his lips, then he wipes the rest of his face clean on the back of his hand. His chest is heaving like he's run ten miles, like he's about to burst out of his skin. Deanna reaches out and hauls him toward her with all the strength in her still-trembling body. 

Sam kisses her open-mouthed and desperate, greedy tongue and soft suckling mouth. Deanna puts her hands all over his shoulders and back while she swallows his quick gasping breaths, just to feel the barely-restrained rumble of him, like driving the Impala; then finally she takes pity on him, pulling away.

“Little brother,” Deanna says into Sam’s ear, smoky and tender; and he _whines_ , a sound of acute, pained need. “Tell me what you want.”

“Let me fuck you,” Sam says at once in a rush, “Dee, can I?” 

Deanna bites him softly under the jaw, again lower down his throat. Then she slaps his hip and says, “Condom. Go.” 

Sam obeys and comes back in a blur; or maybe it's that Deanna’s just distracted by touching herself lightly, feeling how slick she is. Sam looks down at her, and then looks heavenward, gripping his cock tightly with one hand.

Deanna grins up at him, her whole body tingling like a shaken soda can, like a static shock zap. “Sammy, you fuck me however you like,” she says generously, stretching slow and languorous on the bed with a showy arch of her back.

“Please stop talking,” Sam says plaintively, and Deanna is laughing even as she's reaching for Sam to drag him down toward her, laughing right up until he's between her thighs again and pushing slowly inside at her, at which point the laugh stutters and melts into a slow inhale instead. It's not that it hurts, though jesus he's big enough she'll be feeling it tomorrow; it's that the vulnerability of penetration that Deanna forgets every time is here something different, less uncomfortable and more startlingly intense. She's always wanted Sam as close as she could get him; always known he's rooted deep right inside her, like the heart of a tree, something she's grown around and impossible to tear free even if she wanted to. And now here he is, crossing borders and getting deeper still, one more thing on the list of what they can have from each other, when she thought they'd exhausted them all long back. 

Sam is careful with her, watching the twitch of her mouth and the way she squirms, sensitive, at his slow thrusts; but Deanna grabs his shoulders and digs her nails in, tells him, “I said ‘however you like’,” and then Sam puts his head down and bites his lip and gives it to her with a savagery like she's turned his key and released him. Jesus fuck it aches and it's a rush and it makes Deanna’s eyes burn and it makes her want to cling to Sam and kiss his face, looking down at her with eyes bright like this is the only place he's ever wanted to be, and so she does: kisses his chin and the sharp angle of his cheekbone and anywhere else she can reach, while he fucks her so deep she thinks she'll feel him for the rest of her days.

It's the tight pale line of Sam’s mouth and the sweat slicking his forehead that eventually tip Deanna off; she thinks, _holy shit_ , and puts her hands on his upper arms, muscles rigid and trembling under her fingers, and says with hopeless affection and a low throb of heat, “Sammy, sweetheart, you're not gettin’ another one out of me tonight. You can come.” She says it again, touching the thin press of his lips to soften them, get the tip of her thumb inside. “I want you to. C'mon, little brother.” 

Sam screws his eyes shut and does what she says: stilling inside her, sucking her thumb into his mouth like he needs it there when it hits him. Deanna feels it with a keen piercing tenderness in her chest, like she's been hollowed out and refilled with flame, roaring and triumphant and protective. 

Braced on his elbows, Sam lets Deanna’s thumb slip free and catches his breath for a minute while she pushes his sweat-damp hair out of his eyes. Then carefully he pulls out, getting rid of the condom with shaky hands; when he’s done, Deanna pulls his warm, smothering weight onto her. She could break the thrumming emotional air with a joke or a teasing comment, but despite the prickling vulnerability of being so exposed, like her chest is cracked open to bare her beating heart, she does what she really wants to do: cards her fingers through Sam’s hair and kisses him lazily, little kisses that melt into more kisses without ever moving more than a half-inch apart, like they have an eternity to spend on it, like they'll never get tired of it. 

Finally they wind down, Sam rolling away and onto his back, his previous look of wavering, near-fearful happiness replaced with a dumb, dazed grin. 

“This is so much better than how my day started,” Sam says, sighing a little. 

“Your day started with a spirit throwing pitchforks at your head, I'm so flattered,” Deanna snorts, getting to her feet — 

— or trying, at least, because her knees actually buckle when she does, limbs shaky and useless; the look on her face must be something to see, because Sam bursts into laughter, sudden and delighted. His dimples pop out on either side of his white flashing teeth, which is probably why Deanna’s too distracted to protest when he scoops her up and carries her to the bathroom with no apparent effort. 

“All right, stud, don't let it go to your head,” Deanna says in Sam's ear, unwillingly amused; and Sam replies, “Too late, it's gone,” voice rich with laughter, which is always the best he's sounded, so Deanna lets it slide. 

They wash up in turns, because Deanna loves Sam but she's not going to wrestle with the breadth of him in this shower. Sam flushes the toilet while she's in there and grins at her like a snotty fifteen-year-old when she yanks the curtain open to glare at him, lit up with a giddy puckish air she hasn't seen in forever. Deanna bides her time and waits for him to get one foot in the shower, before slapping his ass _hard_ and snickering as she leaves, Sam fumbling to stay upright and swearing behind her. 

They order a pizza afterward, deliriously happy and absolutely fucking ravenous. When it arrives, Deanna throws on Sam's shirt before she gets it from the delivery guy, because she has a hunch that's one of his sweet, dorky, predictable fantasies. She sets the pizza down on the bed and finds Sam going slightly red and staring between the slope of her exposed collarbone and her bare legs, so Deanna marks that one as a win.

Licking grease from their fingers and knocking back a couple of their lukewarm, abandoned beers, they curl together on the bed like puppies. Deanna leaves Sam's shirt on while they watch tv because it's getting chilly in the room, but that doesn't seem to impede Sam's ability to enjoy her breasts if the way he keeps lazily cupping the heavy swell of them and tracing aimless patterns over her soft nipples through the fabric is any indication. Deanna is totally spent, but it's still a warm, shivery sensation, one she plans to revisit in the morning. 

Sam makes Deanna get up so they can brush their teeth when she looks like she's going to fall asleep; she bitches at him half-heartedly through a foamy toothpaste mouth, and Sam leans on the doorframe and grins at her like a little boy while he squeezes paste on his own brush. It's familiar and not, echoes of years of the same overlayed with the new way Sam crowds Deanna against the counter from behind, the way her body sings with the aftermath of his touch; and maybe the strangest thing is how strange it doesn't feel, how everything in her resounds with the absolute rightness of it. 

Back in bed, Sam scoots close and tugs on a lock of Deanna’s hair, and then kisses her waiting mouth lingering and thorough. 

“You’d better cuddle me now,” Sam says against her mouth, and he sounds for the first time in a long time like her demanding baby brother who is absolutely sure of his status at the top of her world; and Deanna says, so happy she’s nearly sick with it, “All right, princess,” and puts her arms around him, and holds him all night long.


End file.
